TITLE
Recommendation to request City Manager, or designee, to work with all appropriate departments to report back to the City Council within 30 days on violent and quality-of-life crime in Long Beach with an overview of incidents and trends, an outline of current efforts and opportunities to address violence in highly-impacted neighborhoods, and a plan of action to meet the need for safety in all of our communities.
DISCUSSION
Over the last several months the City of Long Beach has experienced an alarming rise in gun violence and homicide-particularly in the Willmore and Washington Neighborhoods of the First District. In the month of December for example, the Long Beach Police Department reported four new murder investigations with two of them occurring in these neighborhoods. In addition to these four investigations, Long Beach has seen a number of other violent crimes and no-hit shootings, and community safety has been an increasingly prevalent public concern throughout this past year.
Long Beach residents are also reporting an extraordinary increase in "petty" crime such as graffiti, dumped items, broken car windows, property crime, and theft throughout the city. Currently, in the First District alone, the Go Long Beach app has 243 cases of dumped items or graffiti being reported. There is also a loud chorus of residents reporting this directly to District 1 staff during the normal course of daily work and during weekly Check-ins via Zoom.
These impacts are not unique to Long Beach or the Southern California region, and the COVID- 19 pandemic has deeply limited access to upstream opportunities and community-building that help prevent instances of violent crime. Efforts to address violence have been further hindered by the widespread closure of in-person education due to the pandemic and the financial hardship of a recession that has been disproportionately concentrated on low-income residents and communities of color.
Around the country, major and mid...
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